Ground reference maneuvers

The candidate teaches the ground reference maneuvers from the right seat: the rectangular course, S-turns across a road, and turns around a point. At the end they can explain wind drift correction to somebody who has never thought about it, fly the maneuvers to private standards while narrating, and correct a Student who is fixated on the ground.

This is the first lesson where the maneuver itself is the teaching problem. Lessons 25 and 26 used maneuvers the candidate could fly in their sleep. Ground reference is the first place where a Student's misunderstanding is genuinely hard to name, because the airplane is doing something the Student can see out the window and interpret wrong.

Ground reference maneuvers are where a private student first meets divided attention as a real problem: outside for the reference, inside for altitude and airspeed, and around for traffic, all at low altitude with a wind that will not hold still. A candidate who can teach this can teach divided attention generally, which is most of primary instruction.

It is also, for the candidate, the lowest-altitude air work in the phase. Everything about the threshold and the floor in this lesson is tighter than the phase default, and that is deliberate.

Element 6 is the one that keeps people alive. A Student flying turns around a point will fixate on the point, stop scanning, and let the airspeed decay in the steepest part of the turn. That is the error, it is the error every time, and it is the one the candidate has to catch before it develops.

Element 7 is the emergency thread, per US-5.6. It is not a scenario in this lesson. It is the habit of knowing where the airplane would go, maintained continuously at low altitude, and the candidate is expected to teach it as part of the maneuver rather than as an add-on.

Ground 48 minutes, flight 90 minutes. Reconciles with the declared 0.8 ground and 1.5 dual.

Instructor: FAA-S-ACS-25 at Areas IV and IX. FAA-H-8083-3C. A sectional with the practice area and a suitable road, section line, and prominent point identified. The airplane.

Candidate: headset, the flight manual for the airplane being flown, their written preflight ground lesson, the current sectional, the wind forecast for the practice area.

Airplane: normal category, dual controls. A day with usable wind. A ground reference lesson in dead calm teaches almost nothing and should be reflown, not signed off.

Cockpit recording: optional. Not one of the four P7 lessons. A candidate who wants a second look at their own low-altitude scan may find it useful.

1. Check the wind before the brief. If it is calm, say so and decide then whether to fly this lesson or swap it with another in the phase. Ground reference ordering is flexible.
2. Take the brief as a Student. Ask the question every private student asks: "why does the bank keep changing?"
3. Grade the brief before the airplane, against this lesson's standards, using the critique standard.
4. Brief the floor explicitly and note that it differs from the rest of the phase. 500 ft AGL here, not 1,500 ft AGL. Say why.
5. In part 2, let the candidate demonstrate all three maneuvers with narration. Do not prompt.
6. In part 3, fly as a Student who fixates. See the script. The fixation errors are the lesson.
7. Watch the candidate's scan, not just the Student's. A candidate absorbed in critiquing the Student's flying stops looking outside, at low altitude, in an airplane they are responsible for.
8. Part 4, candidate first.

Simulated Student script notes

Not in the study guide.

1. Teach the preflight ground lesson on the ground reference maneuvers.
2. Demonstrate a rectangular course, S-turns across a road, and turns around a point from the right seat, narrating throughout.
3. Talk the Simulated Student through each of the three, correcting what goes wrong.
4. Maintain and teach a continuous awareness of where the airplane would land, throughout.
5. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
6. Critique the Simulated Student's flying, then self-critique, then listen.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate delivers the preflight ground lesson on the ground reference maneuvers, covering all seven items of the brief, and explains wind drift correction in terms a Student can use to predict the next turn rather than to describe the last one.
2. The candidate flies a rectangular course, S-turns across a road, and turns around a point to private pilot tolerances from the right seat while narrating continuously, at the entry altitude the current AI.IX.E task specifies, with no silence longer than five seconds.
3. The candidate talks the Simulated Student through each of the three maneuvers, and on the fixation error names the interrupted scan before naming the airspeed or the altitude.
4. The candidate states where the airplane would land at least twice during the low-altitude work, unprompted, and teaches it as part of the maneuver rather than as a separate item.
5. The candidate takes the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
6. The candidate delivers a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown, per standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md.
7. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 3 is the one that separates this lesson from a flying lesson. A candidate who says "watch your airspeed" has treated the symptom. The Student's airspeed decayed because they stopped looking at anything except the point.

Falling short does not block lesson 28. No proficiency gate (Decision 9). It triggers policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

Verbatim in the study guide.

The instructor takes the airplane when:

• Altitude passes 500 ft AGL descending, at any point in any maneuver.
• Airspeed reaches 1.2 Vs1 in any configuration without correction applied.
• Bank exceeds 45 degrees during any ground reference maneuver.
• Neither pilot has looked outside for a full turn.
• The airplane is positioned where a power failure would leave no landing option and it is not corrected immediately.
• Either pilot is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Hard floor: 500 ft AGL, and this lesson's floor is lower than the rest of phase 3 because the maneuvers are flown lower. North Aero policy, not regulation (US-3.4). The entry altitude comes from the current AI.IX.E task and is read on the day. The floor is North Aero's and it does not move.

The bank limit is tighter here than elsewhere in the phase for the same reason: 45 degrees at 700 ft AGL with a decaying airspeed is the accident this maneuver produces.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, task AI.IX.E, in full. Write down the tolerances and the entry altitude band.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the ground reference maneuvers chapter.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2, the seven items of the brief.
• The current forecast wind for the practice area, on the morning of the lesson.

Deliverable: Write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on the ground reference maneuvers. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering the ground reference cluster. Include one explanation of wind drift correction that a Student could use to predict what the airplane will do in the next turn, in under sixty seconds, without a diagram.

VS-27-1

Type: Exemplar | ACS task: AI.IX.E | Status: empty What it should show: turns around a point flown with bank varying continuously and altitude held, narrated throughout, with the scan visibly maintained Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar

VS-27-2

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.IX.E | Status: empty What it should show: a Student fixating on the point, scan stopped, airspeed decaying through the steepest part of the turn Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

VS-27-3

Type: Error | ACS task: AI.IX.E | Status: empty What it should show: S-turns with unequal halves, the second half wide, from a constant bank flown through a changing groundspeed Reference Critique: to be written from the Instructor Debrief of the flight the Clip is taken from

Tagged by ACS task. These serve every lesson touching AI.IX.E.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.

Grade standard 3 hard. It is the difference between a candidate who is flying with somebody and a candidate who is instructing. Naming the scan before the airspeed is a specific, observable thing, and it is worth telling them in advance that you are listening for it.

Watch their eyes, at low altitude, while they are busy. The failure mode is a candidate so absorbed in the Student's performance that they stop flying the airplane themselves. It is the reason the threshold has a "neither pilot has looked outside" item, which is the only item in the phase that can be triggered by the candidate's attention rather than the airplane's state.

On a marginal wind day, say what was not tested. A lesson flown in 4 kt of wind did not test wind drift correction, and recording it as though it did is how a gap reaches the checkride.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-5.2, US-5.4
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior, naming flying tolerance and teaching quality
• ✓Common errors listed, each with the instructor's response
• ✓Intervention threshold stated explicitly, with a floor lower than the phase default and the reason for it
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots named and ACS-tagged, and the lesson states it is deliverable with them empty
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no POH performance numbers, no pricing
• ✓Falling short does not block progression (Decision 9)
• ✓Runs the four-part cycle from standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md
• ✓Positive exchange of controls practiced, including from an airplane not offered